Publications

From a study of 97 oil fields from most major Indonesian petroleum basins it is concluded that the efficiency of oil field operations has improved by up to 100 times over the last 100 years.Different methods of assessment give the following results:1) At field peak production each producing well on average flowed around 10 barrels of oil per day in the era prior to WW-II, whereas in the latter part of the 20th century the average well produced 1,000 barrels of oil per day.2) The study indicates a 50-fold decrease in the number of field wells (including dry holes) required to produce 1 million barrels of oil over the studied 100 year period.3) Recent wells on average each produce a total of 1 million barrels of oil whereas that volume required between 5 and 500 wells 100 years ago.A review shows that technological advances within the oil business occurred in three major steps, corresponding to the following periods: a) pre WW-I, b) the years between the two World Wars and c) post WW-II. The technological advances in these periods match efficiency trends observed in the study.Due to the international nature of the Indonesian oil business the results of this study are expected to apply worldwide.